With tough economical times, restaurants have become quite creative with how they offer their meals to adult customers and also to kids.
Hotels have also seized the opportunity and increased their offerings for children in their food and beverage programs. The “Adopt-a-Tomato” program, an interactive dinner menu that teaches children the importance of supporting farmers and saving the environment is an initiative launched by Loews Hotels, who seems to have used it as a spin-off to their Adopt-a-Farmer program launched earlier in the year, initiative that had in mind the support of independent purveyors located in surrounding areas of each of its hotels.
The Adopt-a-Tomato program features a colorful kids’ menu with healthy items like grilled chicken breast, petite tenderloin of beef and fun facts and games along with recycling tips, energy-saving factoids and other ways to teach kids how to make a difference and an impact. As a special gift, kids receive complimentary tomato seeds to grow in their own garden. While eco-friendly programs such as the one mentioned here carry subliminal messages and can enhance the overall family experience, it remains to be seen if these premiums will have the desire impact on kids. Unfortunately they lack one of the very important “must-haves” of a kids program: immediate gratification. There is however the coloring book portion of the experience that allows kids to immediately draw, color and play games, so maybe this could be what makes the program a success.
Other hotel chains like The Ritz-Carlton in Miami and Fort Lauderdale have launched fixed-price kids’ meal plans. These range from US$ 30 to US$ 37 per day and allow children 12 and under the opportunity to sample anything out of selected outlets during breakfast, lunch and dinner, as well as unlimited sodas and juice throughout the day. Some families may consider the price to be quite high, but, keep in mind we are talking about UNLIMITED access to selected outlets. I do find a problem with a kid being able to have 10 sodas in an afternoon. Can parents really handle that?
The fact that restaurants and now hotels are fighting for family business, remains true. What will you do to get your share of family business? How can you ensure that your customers continue to return to your locations? Here are some tips that have proven effective in many outlets.
1. Offer a kids-eat-free night: Pick one of your slow days and offer a free kids meal with the purchase of an adult meal. If you want to stand out even more, do not limit the offering to someone that purchases a meal: simply give the kids’ meal for free. Most of the time, parents will be appreciative and end up ordering something anyway.
2. Offer FVCs (frequent visitor cards): It is a fact that your most important clients are the ones that visit your restaurant or location on a regular basis and several times a week. Reward those that do. Offer a free sandwich, free drink or free dessert once they have completed the card.
3. Offer cash back: Certainly today nobody wants to give money back, but, you would be amazed at the things people do to get a dollar. How about offering 10% of the total tab back to the customer to be used at a future visit? You can even limit the visit to 7 days urging them to come back even sooner. Yes, your profits may not be as high next time around, but your traffic will
Whatever you do, let’s not forget why customers keep returning to the same places over and over again. People want to eat and they want to get good food, at a good price. Further, customers want to be treated nicely and certainly want to eat in peace. I will mention this until I turn blue in the face like a smurf:
- Concentrate on the food: good tasting food will attract clients
- Concentrate on the service: if your employees are not greeting customers with a hello, not saying please or thank you, chances are you could be loosing profit and clients daily.
- Concentrate on atmosphere: by atmosphere I mean hygiene also. Keep your tables, your counters, your floor, and above all, your restrooms clean and spotless.
These are tough times. Concentrate on the basics and be creative. When the going out to eat gets tough, the tough ones will attract the customers.
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